Once again Wales is leading the world with its world leading technology and the English are gutted. The Eye Magazine can exclusively reveal the hidden, secret, clandestine, classified, under cover and downright shifty truth about Ken Skates and his much abused ring of iron. A close examination of the publicity shots and a direct message from someone who, for reasons of laziness, I shall refer to as ‘Deep Throat’ leads to the inevitable conclusion that it is in fact a sheep Stargate.

With Brexit rapidly approaching Welsh ministers are looking further afield for export opportunities and the Andromeda Galaxy has been provisionally identified as an area usefully devoid of ‘Destination Control’ red tape. Concerned about the uncertain future of Welsh exports, Ken Skates AM Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure set his officials the task of finding territories without barriers to trade. They immediately identified most of Wales as being tariff free, the exception being Pontcanna which has a £5million flat import duty on anything not labelled ‘Home Made’ including ironically, mobile homes.

After looking at the data Mr Skates decided selling things in Wales wasn’t technically exporting so issued instructions to widen the scope of the research. Minutes later the algorithms threw up the Andromeda galaxy as the nearest suitable market and the adventure began.

Luckily the Assembly had a Stargate, left over from when First Minister The Rt Hon Carwyn Jones AM defeated the ‘Klatooine Overlords of Menace‘ by travelling to Ursa Major on an off season day return and slaying their clan leader in a brutal knife attack. He said he’d had a lovely day out but only gave the Stargate a 2 on TripAdvisor because on the return journey they served his pork scratchings in a plastic wicker basket which he thought was “too self consciously retro”.

For that reason the Stargate has lain dormant in the bowels of the Assembly ever since which seems fair enough. Having seen it in action though, Mr Skates was determined to exploit its potential. Once he’d identified the correct funding stream it was simply a case of finding a convincing cover story and a suitable location.

For unknown reasons anything to do with aliens or alien technology has to be kept absolutely secret so telling the press we were about to send our unwanted sheep through an inter-galactic matter transporter was out of the question.

This is when he hit upon the brilliant idea of saying it was a piece of public art celebrating the subjugation of the Welsh people in a relentless campaign of brutality and humiliation by the Norman invaders. Knowing this would enrage the public he rightly assumed nobody except the English Defence League would ever visit it so he would be free to send thousands of sheep a day through it in total secrecy.

The maths of it depended on the labyrinthine nature of agricultural subsidies and a post Brexit promise he’d seen on the side of a bus. According to his calculations all he needed to do was get the sheep out of the country and as long as there were no tariffs the other side, Wales would be in profit. Carl Sargeant suggested pushing them off the Menai bridge but it turned out the buggers could swim.

I know some people will say this is just science fiction and that there’s no way the Welsh government could operate a sheep Stargate to another galaxy. What I say to them is, the truth is over by there.